LULA Founder and Celebrity Makeup Artist Sarah Uslan on Creating the Ultimate Glow-Inducing Skincare Line

According to Sarah Uslan, celebrity makeup artist and founder of LULA, your skincare routine is the secret to achieving smooth, flawless-looking makeup. Ahead, she shares how she pivoted from makeup to creating a line of multi-use, skin-loving products and explains why, ironically, she tells clients not to wear too much makeup. 

What inspired you to start your own skincare brand?

It all goes back to my education as a makeup artist. After graduating from college, I was at my first official event at Bergdorf Goodman. Bobbi Brown was walking around critiquing everyone’s makeup and she told me she liked my work. Shortly after the event, I got a call offering me to join the first-ever team at Bobbi’s private studio in Montclair, New Jersey. After that, I was sort of fast-tracked into the world of makeup as her assistant. Bobbi taught me how to do makeup, and more importantly, how to assess skin, which is something I’ve carried with me and have tried to teach other people. Anyone can do a smoky eye, but it takes skill to apply skincare and makeup in a way that makes someone with acne and texture look like they aren’t wearing makeup and that their skin is perfect. Skin has always been the priority. 

Getting into skincare wasn’t a conscientious move where I thought to myself that I wanted to create a skincare brand. Rather, it came about authentically one day when I was at a shoot on the beach. I wanted to accent the model’s beautiful skin and, on the spot, I mixed together a bunch of oils and balms like a mad scientist and concocted the first ever version of Beyond Balm. At the end of the shoot, the model told me her skin felt amazing and that for once she didn’t want to immediately wash her face. On my drive home I noticed how soft my hands felt and that’s when the lightbulb went off and I thought to myself,  ‘I need to bottle this up.’

 

How can LULA products be used aside from their traditional uses? 

The Beyond Balm can be used on the lips, on the cuticles, as the last step in your skincare routine or even added to your cheeks as a balmy, glossy topper when your makeup is complete. The balm is so versatile. The Potion Serum oil works perfectly as a primer for those with dry, cracked skin. Apply it to your face and add your foundation or concealer on top of it so that your makeup won’t grip to the scaly, flakey spots. You can also use it after your moisturizer every night. Sometimes I even use it in my hair. There are no rules. I just throw them in my bag and use them however I want.

How did you create the concept for the packaging?

As a makeup artist, you get so much product sent to you, which leads to a lot of clutter. I was stuffing packages into my overflowing medicine cabinet and thought to myself, ‘if only there were products you felt proud to keep out on your shelf like a vase or a candle.’ I decided that I wanted to bring an aesthetic design to the brand. At the time, I was deep in a ceramics course and wanted the packaging to look like a newly-created piece of pottery. I also prioritized a color story that was both soothing and gender neutral, so that everyone feels like they could use it. The unboxing experience was important to me too. I wanted to give customers something that they could re-use, whether it be for paper clips or to organize their makeup. 

LULA is dedicated to sustainability as well as doing generational good. Can you tell me a little bit about your initiatives?

For me, starting a business simply for profit felt empty, so I made sure that LULA had a philanthropic element to it from the start. We work with my mom’s charity — NEU Global — to build clean water projects in Rwanda. Our goal for our first year is to fund one water kiosk, which is like a water pipeline, for one community. The kiosks have such a positive domino effect. When you bring clean water to a community, you provide an element of security to everyone, but especially the women and children. The access to water also helps the community economically. The community pays for using the water and the money accumulates in a community bank. This money is then given to members of the community in the form of a loan to start a local business.  

Do you have a certain skincare routine you recommend to clients? Do you prep their skin in a certain way? 

Flawless makeup starts with your skincare routine. There isn’t one recipe for all skin, though, because each person’s skin is so different. If someone has dry skin, I might use an essence or a spray and then layer on a serum. I might use a gua sha or do facial cupping to manipulate oil into the skin to give it some life. If I have a client that’s more acnaic, I try to avoid applying products that will strip the skin and dry it out. I always tell my clients that they shouldn’t shy away from oil just because they have acne — some oils actually have antibacterial properties in them. 

What advice — beauty or non-beauty — would you give your younger self?

First, I would say don’t feed into trends. Talk to experts about your specific situation and do what works for you. Don’t follow all these routines and trends on Youtube and TikTok. Also, don’t do anything that could be permanent. For me —back in the day — it was all the rage to over-pluck your eyebrows. Luckily, my eyebrows grew back but most of my friends’ eyebrows didn’t. If you want to do something, make sure you see a professional and consider the pros and cons. Second, I would give the same ironic advice Bobbi gave to me on the first day I worked for her: don’t wear too much makeup. It’s fun to play with makeup, but if you're using it to cover up who you are, makeup won’t do anything. You need to love yourself and your features. Makeup will only help accent the things you love rather than serve as something you can hide behind. Also, from a skincare perspective, if you wear heavy layers of makeup starting at a young age, you’re not giving your skin the chance to breathe. You need to let it breathe. Think about how your skin will look years later and give it a chance to breathe. Oh, and wear sunscreen. 

Photo Credit: Sarah Uslan 

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